THEME: Sunday in the Park with George — A BROADWAY MUSICAL composed by STEPHEN SONDHEIM
Letters spell out "Look, I made a hat" and also create the image of a hat-- that is.... they made a hat.
Word of the Day: STEPHEN SONDHEIM (Pulitzer-winning composer and lyricist of "Sunday in the Park With George") —
Sondheim was an avid fan of puzzles and games. He is credited with introducing cryptic crosswords, a British invention, to American audiences through a series of cryptic crossword puzzles he created for New York magazine in 1968 and 1969. Sondheim was "legendary" in theater circles for "concocting puzzles, scavenger hunts and murder-mystery games", inspiring the central character of Anthony Shaffer's 1970 play Sleuth. Sondheim's love of puzzles and mysteries is evident in The Last of Sheila, an intricate whodunit written with longtime friend Anthony Perkins.
• • •
Hello everyone, and welcome to a Malaika MWednesday! This puzzle was totally out of my wheelhouse. While I do generally like musicals, and have probably seen more than 99% of people my age, this is not one that I am familiar with. (I know the name, but not any of the music, although I have also heard that it is excellent.)
On top of that, the fill and the clues felt a little dated to me. I wonder if the editors did this on purpose, given that the subject matter is from about forty years ago. It keeps things consistent.
A big part of being an editor is deciding if a theme is worth publishing, taking into account whether or not solvers will be familiar with it. In this case, I knew the musical, but didn't know the lyric-- but I can still appreciate the cute wordplay that comes from the letters doing exactly what they spell out. I associate puzzles where you have to "connect the dots" with the constructor Elizabeth Gorski, but this mechanism is a little different from hers.
This has always been my experience regarding an ENDIVE, btw. "Salad green" ?????
The fill that I found hard was the short stuff, like GTOS, TEAT (not hard, but I couldn't believe that was real), ESSEN, PABA, ELA, UEY, and SOU. I was also really slow to get OKAY THEN, what with DID OK literally two blocks above it. I think I would have preferred to see two "OK"s in the grid (or two "OKAY"s) than to see one of each. It felt like pulling back the curtain on constructors! I don't want you guys to notice that I just spell things (omelette / omelet, okiedokie / okeydokey, etc) just based on whatever fits better!! I want things to seem 100% purposeful!!!
Bullets:
[Fashion name that's become slang for "excellent"] for GUCCI — The term "name" threw me off here (although of course it's correct!) since I think of it first as a brand. I don't know the exact etymology of it meaning "excellent" but Gucci Mane was making music in the early 2000s, so I'd guess this "slang" has been around over twenty years. The phrasing "that's become" made me think it was something much more recent.
[Jerry's uncle on "Seinfeld"] for LEO — Jerry's uncle appeared in 15 episodes, or 8% of the episodes in Seinfeld. He last appeared on air in 1998, when I was not quite one year old.
[Key's longtime partner in sketch comedy] for PEELE — Key & Peele did comedy together for over a decade, but it's also been about a decade since their sketch show aired. I'm leaving my favorite of theirs below.
xoxo Malaika
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd] ============================= ❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
THEME: "WE WILL ROCK YOU" (53A: Iconic 1977 Queen hit ... or a hint to 19-, 31- and 42-Across) — things that rock (you?) (as in "cause (you?) to sway")
Theme answers:
NEONATAL NURSE (19A: Hospital worker tending to newborns)
MECHANICAL BULL (31A: Bar attraction with a saddle and horns)
TECTONIC PLATES (42A: Segments of Earth's lithosphere)
Word of the Day: CUTCO (33D: Big name in carving knives) —
Cutco Corporation, known prior to 2009 as Alcas Corporation, is an American company that sells cutlery, predominantly through multi-level marketing. It is the parent company of CUTCO Cutlery Corp., Vector Marketing, Ka-Bar Knives, and Schilling Forge. The company was founded in 1949 by Alcoa and Case Cutlery (hence "Al-cas") to manufacture stainless steel knives for Alcoa's WearEver Cookware division. Alcoa purchased Case's share in the company in 1972, and Alcas became a separate private company in 1982 after a management buyout. In 1985, the company acquired Vector Marketing Corporation.
The company has been the subject of criticism and lawsuits for its business practices, and has been accused of being a multi-level marketing company. The Los Angeles Times claims that Vector meets the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) definition of a multi-level marketing company which is "businesses that involve selling products to family and friends and recruiting other people to do the same" because they sell their product through person-to-person sales. Salespeople are generally young and recruited from high school or college. Students are hired to sell Cutco products (mainly kitchen knives) to customers, starting with their friends and family. Vector's recruitment tactics have been described as deceptive, and they have faced numerous lawsuits over their pay structure and treatment of its salespeople, who are mostly independent contractors instead of employees. Vector claims they are a single-level direct selling marketing company, not a multi-level marketing company or a pyramid scheme as its detractors claim.
• • •
Look at that skinny-ass grid! Yesterday, we got a chonky 16-wide, and today, Jack Sprat. Funny. The funniest part of this puzzle, for me, though, was CUTCO. The answer itself isn't particularly funny, but my reaction ("What the hell is that?") ended up being funny, because I went back to see if CUTCO had been in the puzzle before, and it had, twice, and both times my reaction was ... "What the hell is that?" Apparently no amount of the NYTXW trying to force me to believe that CUTCO is a "big name" in knives is going to get my brain to accept that CUTCO is, in fact, a "big name" in knives. Was elated to discover today that CUTCO is (or really really looks like) a multi-level marketing scheme, LOL (see "Word of the Day," above). No wonder I've never seen or heard of them. CUTCO also has one of the worst, least imaginative product names of all time. CUTCO is the name you go with when the only other options your name guy could come up with were KNIVES 'R' US and THE SLICE BOYS. "Uh ... we'll go with CUTCO, I guess." Anyway, CUTCO stood out like a BEAR CUB on an OIL RIG today, because it's the only answer that made me hesitate for even half a second. OK, THETA made me hesitate for half a second, but only just (4A: Angle symbol, in geometry). Everything else went in as fast as I could read the clues and type the answers. I can see how T'CHALLA might be a name that slows some people down today (4D: Birth name of Marvel Comics Black Panther), and I admit I thought the Pompeo actress was an ELENA rather than an ELLEN (32D: Actress Pompeo of "Grey's Anatomy"). But otherwise, I was a flame and this puzzle was dry grass. Whoosh gone. Didn't even have to read the clue for MECHANICAL BULL. I had fun seeing how fast I could go (if I'd been timing, I gotta believe I'd've come in well under 3), but otherwise, fun was somewhat limited.
Do these things "rock you?" Well, not me personally, but they rock ... one. I don't think of a NEONATAL NURSE's primary job as being "rocking," but I guess holding the babies and soothing them in some way is probably part of the job, sure. "Rocking," though, seems very specific. Are they rocking the cradles? Do neo-natal wards have rockable cradles? NEW MOTHERS or the equivalent might have made more sense here, but I can't say NEONATALNURSES wasn't an eye-catching answer. I wrote it in thinking "huh, a triple 'N' theme, this should be interesting!" As for the other themers, yes, bulls and earthquakes will indeed cause you to sway, if not fall, if not hurt yourself. Those answers work just fine. And I enjoyed remembering the anthemic Queen song. The rest of the fill was largely filler. TIM WALZ is an interesting full name to squeeze in there, though at the moment all it does is remind me of the Siege of Minneapolis (ongoing). Would be nice if Walz and other elected officials had any kind of answer for the violence being perpetrated by the federal government. Give a bunch of weak, poorly-trained, sadistic CLODS (37A: Buffoons) automatic weapons and body armor, set them loose to terrorize ethnic Somalis and other non-white immigrants (so—virtually any non-white person), and let them know in no uncertain terms that they are above the law ... and presto, you've got yourself your very own Gestapo. That is what ICE is at this point. Bizarre to pretend otherwise. Buncha dudes too incompetent and cowardly for actual war, doing their little war cosplay games in American cities with live ammunition, gleefully, boastfully hurting people. You're either into it or you're not, but ... Gestapo is the correct analogy. As for me: look, I don't even like ICE in my water (12D: Bartender's supply). F*** ICE. Abolish ICE.
On to more pleasant things now.
Bullets:
36A: 1985 mystery film with three different endings (CLUE) — this movie is very silly and very enjoyable. I don't think I saw it when it initially came out, but I did watch it just last month as part of my "What Would I Have Seen 40 Years Ago?" movie-watching project. Just to give some structure to my (prodigious) movie-watching habit, I decided that once a week I'd just look at the movie listings for 40 years ago and then watch whatever movie I'd see if those were my options. In the first two weeks of this year, I've watched Ran and Brazil. Which is to say there were some *really* good movies in theaters 40 years ago. As for CLUE, it's no Ran, but it is entertaining. It's got Martin Mull *and* Madeline Kahn (something Ran cannot claim—though why they never remade Ran with Martin Mull and Madeline Kahn, I do not know—I'd've seen that sixteen times)
9D: Yogi, once (BEAR CUB) — this is a hilariously tortured example of successive clue rhyming. You've got 8D: Yogi's pose (ASANA) and then ... this clue, immediately after. If you had to write a hundred BEAR CUB clues, you'd never use Yogi. Only the proximity of this yoga clue is going to suggest to you "hey, what if Yogi was ... little? I know we never ever see him as a BEAR CUB, but ... I mean, he must have been one, right? Cartoons don't have actual lives, but ... still ... it's implied. Let's do it!"
52D: Many men on dating shows (HUNKS) — is this true? Also, do people still say "HUNKS?' Unironically? I was honestly looking for a more modern word. HIMBOS? HIMBI?
44D: Pet sitters? (LAP CATS) — they are pets who sit (on your lap). I think you are the sitter, technically. Cats rarely sit in laps. They lie. Or flop. I had LAP here and had to wait for crosses, as LAP DOGS is not only a possible answer, but probably the more common phrase (LAP DOGS define a certain kind of small dog, different from most other, larger dogs, whereas LAP CATS ... any cat might be a lap cat. Most cats I know have, at some time or other, been LAP CATS. It's almost redundant).
[Pet sitters?]
Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld
[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd] ============================= ❤️ Support this blog ❤️:
A long time ago, I was solving this puzzle and got stuck at an unguessable (to me) crossing: N. C. WYETH crossing NATICK at the "N"—I knew WYETH but forgot his initials, and NATICK ... is a suburb of Boston that I had no hope of knowing. It was clued as someplace the Boston Marathon runs through (???). Anyway, NATICK— the more obscure name in that crossing—became shorthand for an unguessable cross, esp. where the cross involves two proper nouns, neither of which is exceedingly well known. NATICK took hold as crossword slang, and the term can now be both noun ("I had a NATICK in the SW corner...") or verb ("I got NATICKED by 50A / 34D!")
.png)
